~June~
11) Emblaze by Jessica Shirvington
12) That Time I Joined the Circus by J.J. Howard
13) Insomnia by J.R. Johansson
14) Blood Feud by Alyxandra Harvey
15) A Spy in the House by Y.S. Lee
16) The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
17) The Day Before by Lisa Schroeder
18) Some Quiet Place by Kelsey Sutton
19) The Boy on the Bridge by Natalie Standiford

Monday, July 25, 2011

Hey everyone. Today I have a guest post for you all from C.F. Fruzzetti and M.I. Pearsall, authors of the new YA book, Sundial. I hope you all enjoy the post.

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Thanks to Briana for having us and highlighting SUNDIAL on The Book Pixie. We wanted to talk about the effect and influence growing up in the 80s had on our outlook on life--resulting in us taking the leap of faith to write SUNDIAL.

We’re best friends who met in the 80s. We always knew we would work together on some creative endeavor which has turned out to be a young adult novel. The bonus of being a writing duo is that we have twice the ideas and creativity that we think comes through in the plot line of SUNDIAL. We've always dreamed big and think we have the decade which we met to thank for that.

We didn't want to just write a love story or a story about friends in high school. We wanted to write something that made people think "Wow! What DIDN'T that story have?" And so SUNDIAL is the story of Whitney Forbes, a teenage psychic who is part of a clandestine CIA program. The setting includes a sophisticated high school social scene with rival sororities. The characters are true survivors -- including a holocaust survivor and Whitney's boyfriend, whose peanut allergy is evidence of an evolving super race. There’s the occasional kung fu sparring match and the quest for “pure energy”. Lastly, the unresolved mystery of Whitney’s mother's death and did we mention the Tanzanian albino?

So how were we influenced by the 80s? The 1980s were demanding. Alphaville’s Forever Young was embraced as an anthem because we were all wondering if “they were going to drop the bomb or not?” Tears for Fears sang “Most of freedom and of pleasure, nothing ever lasts forever, everybody wants to rule the world...” People made deliberate choices and went full tilt. That’s why the 80s was full of excess--people partied hard, worked hard and lived hard.

No doubt the decade is full of memorable characters who persevered: characters who struggled to fit in because they came from the wrong side of the tracks, didn’t have the right clothes/car/house, overcame a karate gang of bullies or had to fight for their right to dance at their senior prom. These are all interesting and relatable characters.But no one stands out more in our minds than Ferris Bueller. Why was his day off so great? Why did we sneak into the Multiplex no less than five times the summer it was released to see it again and again and again?

Not because it was a funny movie about a street-wise kid who could scheme his way out of a day from school. Anyone can do that. It’s because he did it big. If he’s going to fill up eight hours, it’s going to be worth doing! We’re talking singing on top of a float in a city parade, taking in a Cubs game (and catching a fly ball while he’s there), visiting cultural museums and landmarks, having lunch at a fine-dining restaurant and cruising around the city in a vintage, collectible Ferrari. And he wasn’t going to be alone; he wanted his best friends along for the ride. Yeah. If he was going to do this, he was going to really do this!

So why did this character resonate with us so much? Because it is how we think. When we do something--we go big or we don’t do it. And, like Ferris, we want our friends along for the ride to take advantage of each and every opportunity that is out there. When we set out to write the SUNDIAL series, we wanted to create meaningful characters and multidimensional story lines. We want to keep our readers entertained and at the end of the book for them to feel like they just experienced the whirlwind eight hour day that Ferris did and then wake up and want more.

“The question isn't what are we going to do? The question is what aren't we going to do?"-- Ferris Bueller

What are some traits you would think our heroine Whitney would need to survive a decade in the 80s aside from how to spray Aqua Net at the correct angle?